How to Hire the Person Who Hires

So, you just made that big sale, or got that big investment your company has been waiting on. Now, you’ve got the capital and you’re looking to open two new offices and hire some new employees and get the ball rolling, congratulations! Only one problem, there’s no way you have time to handle all that, so you decide to hire a recruiter. How do you hire someone to do your hiring? What should you be looking for, and how do you interview a recruiter? The whole reason you’re hiring them is because you don’t want to, or don’t have the right skillset to hire people!

First thing is first, you have to know what you’re looking for. There are 3 different levels of personnel with hiring expertise and all of them have different responsibilities. You selection will be impacted by how much control you want to keep and money you want to spend:

Sourcer – Person who scans LinkedIn, and other networks for candidates and aggregates resumes to hand off to someone to conduct the rest of the process. This is a good, cheap way to get some of the leg work out of the way and still have most of the control.

Recruiter – In charge of collecting aggregated resumes, scanning through, deciphering the top candidates for specific roles, reaching out to them and leading the initial screening process. This person also co-ordinates and books interviews as well as conduct the reference check.

Recruitment/Hiring Manager – Completes the entire hiring process end-to-end including the full interview, ranking candidates and negotiating employment contracts. This is the best option if you have little HR knowledge or a high quantity/important number of openings.

Now that you’ve decided what level of hiring personnel you’d like, here’s our top 5 most important, must-have characteristics and why:

‘Big Picture’ View: This person is going to have profound impact on your company’s ability to compete and achieve goals, immediately and in the long range. If they can’t see your company and your candidate’s future a few years down the road, you’re going to end up with the wrong employees and will have to start the process over again.

Passion: The most important part of any company is the people. If you want to hire dedicated, passionate employees, your hiring personnel need to be passionate about the success of your company and needs to be able to spot that passion in candidates.

HR Knowledge: In order to stay out of trouble and ensure that you’re interviewing and hiring the right way, it’s imperative that this person know proper processes and regulations, especially if you’re going to be focused on other aspects of the business and/or don’t have this knowledge yourself

Organized: This person must be able to keep track of multiple candidates for multiple openings as well as understand future needs and prepare for them. Mixing up meetings, lack of engagement with candidates throughout the process and long wait times will turn away in-demand candidates

Industry Knowledge: If you’re hiring for technical roles, you need someone with at least a broad understanding of the subject matter to keep candidates honest and appraise their skills appropriately

You’re finally ready to interview! You’ve determined exactly what kind of hiring personnel you need and what qualities you’re looking for, but how do you interview the interviewing expert? The most fool-proof way is a “baptism by fire” — give them some mock recruiting tests. For example:

Have a sample of 3 or 4 short resumes and ask them to quickly read through and rank them

Discuss what roles your company has recently hired, or typically hires, and have them write a short job ad

Sit in on a mock interview. Allow them to run a mock interview with another employee and watch them in action

These tests will show you if the recruiter is just a good candidate on paper, or whether they have certified recruiting chops.

Now that you know what type of hiring personnel you want, what to look for to fill that role and how to test them, all that’s left is to get them in the door!